


Songs of Innocence and Experience

by the_alchemist



Category: Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 20:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2745572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/pseuds/the_alchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neverland is more than Peter's home, more than his domain ... he is more a god than a king. So where does that leave its other inhabitants? Where does that leave Captain Hook?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Songs of Innocence and Experience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Azpidistra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azpidistra/gifts).



> Thank you to lovely beta readers R and S.
> 
> If you're unfamiliar with the traditions of pantomime, then Wikipedia is your friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime. In England, comical pantomime versions of Peter Pan, which tend to differ quite a bit from Barrie's original script, are as common as performances of the play itself.

_“Empty spaces, what are we living for?_   
_Abandoned places, I guess we know the score._   
_On and on, does anybody know what we are looking for?_   
_Another hero, another mindless crime,_   
_Behind the curtain, in the pantomime._   
_Hold the line, does anybody want to take it anymore?_   
_The show must go on.”_

‘The show must go on’ Queen

_“The Child is father to the Man”_

‘My heart leaps up when I behold’ William Wordsworth

 

 

Let us begin at the pantomime.

The villain of the piece, Captain James Hook Esquire, _Etoniensis_ , Dark and Sinister Man, Cruellest Jewel in that Dark Ocean, etc. etc. is standing facing us, the audience. He is wearing comical striped pyjamas and a spotted nightcap, and he is cleaning his teeth with an oversized pink toothbrush. We are laughing uproariously, even the little ones, who covered their eyes and curled up in their chairs the first few times he appeared.

He is looking straight at us, as though into a mirror (I expect this is a metaphor), and humming the tooth-brushing song, which the chorus have just finished.

You may recall that back in Act 1, we were taught something very important. We practiced, and everything. We learnt that if it should ever be the case that Captain Hook is on stage, and the crocodile should appear behind him, we need to warn him by shouting ‘he’s behind you’.

And here she is (I have always been certain the crocodile is a she, her gaping maw representing both the womb and the tomb and her tick-tocking belly the passage of time that takes us inexorably from the one to the other), bright green and yellow, with her big cartoon eyes, and plushy skin, and PVC teeth. And so we shout.

There’s the usual business. ‘What are you shouting about, boys and girls? How dare you disturb me when I’m getting ready for bed?’ and a little bit of oh-no-there-isn’t-oh-yes-there-is-ing, before Hook turns, sees her, takes a theatrical leap backwards, and ends up falling on his bottom (how we laugh!) backed into a corner, his teeth chattering, his knees knocking, trembling from head to toe.

We have not laughed so much since Smee split his trousers in the first scene, and that’s saying something.

We want a closer look. So we alight on the taffrail of the Jolly Roger – all the other pirates are away, for some reason – and can see right into his cabin, where he’s cowering beside the sink, the enormous reptile between him and us, blocking his exit, swishing its scaly tale back and forth with ravenous mien.

We think it quite possible that we have _never_ laughed so much.

 

Peter’s laugh is the youngest thing you’ve ever heard. If babies came out laughing rather than crying, this is what they would sound like. It is all Peter’s doing, of course, leading the crocodile onto the Jolly Roger, luring away the others, that the enemy might face his greatest fear alone and at his most vulnerable.

Hook shudders, but he is not a coward. He will fight. Desperately, he looks around, but his cutlass is hanging up on the coatrack, and his iron hook is on the nightstand, next to his cup of cocoa. The crocodile stands between him and both.

He is weaponless then, but for a giant pink toothbrush? Well, so be it. He scrambles to his feet. ‘On guard,’ he snarls, and strikes a fencer’s pose, his hookless right arm out behind him.

But the crocodile, sadly, has not been taught to fence. She crawls a little closer, snapping her jaws, all hardness and primordial strength, her predator’s brain honed by millions of years of evolution to have not the slightest regard for matters of good form. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. It beats in time with Hook’s heartbeat, and he wonders how many heartbeats he has left.

Peter is easily bored, and though the tableau of man and beast and toothbrush is pretty much the funniest thing he has ever seen ( _including_ that bit in Scene 1 where Smee split his trousers), it is time for something new. He creeps forward, and pinches the crocodile’s tail. She whips round, quick as a flash, and her tail shatters the mirror into a hundred pieces.

She snaps at Peter who flies up just in time then darts back down and tweaks her tail again. In her rage, her jaws alight on the wrong object, tail rather than boy, and clamps down. The pain maddens her. She snaps once more, and soon she is spinning round like a puppy chasing its tail.

Peter saunters past, takes the gleaming hook from the nightstand, and throws it far out to sea, shouting ‘fetch’. At once the beast is gone.

Hook is staring at Peter; Peter at Hook, and for a moment they are motionless. With the defiant boldness of a chess player making the move he knows will either win or lose him the game, he picks up the mug of cocoa and, still staring at Peter, he takes a sip.

He wants to say something cutting. Something momentous. Something that will make Peter understand his own cruelty, know good and evil, pass from boy to man. He searches in vain.

‘There is,’ says Hook, ‘a second cup of cocoa in the galley.’ He pauses. Then: ‘Smee always makes me two, you see.’ Then: ‘you can have it if you like.’

 

‘Cosy’ is the best word I know for the scene we see next. The man is sitting at the head of the bed, the boy at the tail, and both hold steaming mugs of cocoa.

‘I spy, with my little eye,’ says Peter, looking at Hook, ‘something beginning with “e”’

Hook’s chest swells with pride. ‘Etonian,’ he says.

‘No,’ says Pan. ‘Enemy.’

Hook laughs condescendingly. ‘Ignorant, egotistical boy,’ he says. ‘To _you_ I am an enemy, but to my crew I am a Captain, and to my mother I am a son.’ He hopes to nettle the boy. Sometimes, mothers are a sore point.

‘ _You_ don’t have a mother,’ says Pan, all scorn.

‘Oh yes I do,’ says Hook.

‘Oh no you don’t. If you have a mother, what is she called?’

Hook, alas, does not see the trap into which he is about to fall. ‘She is called Mrs Hook, of course.’

‘And you,’ says Peter, ‘you have a hook for a hand.’

Hook glowers and looks pointedly out to sea. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I do not.’ His left hand creeps towards his right wrist and the place where the iron hook should be. His fingers explore the knotty scar tissue.

But Peter just waves the objection away. He does not care for details. ‘Mostly you do,’ he says, ‘and _that_ is why you are called Captain Hook.’

Hook tries to remember his mother’s face, her name, her voice. He thinks perhaps he can remember remembering, or remember _remembering_ remembering, or perhaps a longer cord of rememberings. He wonders what he would find if he followed the cord back to its source, and he shudders, for he does not think it would lead to kind arms and soft kisses; warmth, safety and love.

‘And you can’t have been _born_ with a hook,’ Peter is continuing. ‘Because it was I who cut off your hand.’

Now _that_ he remembers: shock and pain and blood. So why can’t he remember even the sword descending? Why can’t he remember even one single thing that happened before?

The cord is getting shorter, and Hook puts a face to his fears. There is no mother at the end, but a boy god, laughing his whims into solid form, into flesh and blood. (Too much blood, and of a sickly yellow colour.)

If that is so, then what chance does he stand? It is futility to fight against the one who made you, the one who can unmake you. Better the crocodile than that!

They have finished their cocoa, and Peter’s lips are still glistening brown with it. Hook cannot help but smile at the sight.

‘It is only pretend isn’t it?’ says Peter suddenly.

‘What?’ says Hook.

‘That we are enemies.’

‘When you cut me,’ says Hook, ‘the blood was real enough.’

‘It was yellow,’ says Peter. ‘Real blood isn’t yellow.’

‘Did you make me?’ The question slips out unbidden, and Hook wishes he could put it back. But he goes on. ‘I think you made me. I think I didn’t exist before then.’

Peter turns his head away. ‘Don’t,’ he cries. It is the plea of a desperate, tearful child; it is the command of a god.

Don’t. And Hook doesn’t. ‘Yes,’ he sighs, defeated, ‘it’s only pretend.’

Pan grins. ‘I was right!’ he says.

Hook catches a glimpse of his face in a shard of mirror. It is an old man’s face, almost: leathery and deeply lined. He used to study it for traces of the boy he once was, and thought he found them too, but he was wrong. His was never a soft boy’s face, no mother rocked him asleep, he came into the world in shock and pain and blood.

What kind of way is that for someone to come into the world?

‘... the only way ...’

‘Hmm?’ Hook looks at Pan, his brow furrowed.

‘I said,’ Pan says, ‘ha ha ha, the cleverness of me, being right is the only way to be!’ It was a song, I think, from Act I. Not a very good one.

The cord shortens again, and the face at the end of it begins to change, to lengthen and strengthen.

The only way. Yes, all things considered, drawing one’s first breath amidst shock and pain and blood is not an unusual way to begin.

‘Tell me what you see,’ says Hook, offering Peter the shard of mirror. But there is trickery in him, and as soon as the boy’s hand comes near, he brings the shard sharply down and across. It is only a scratch, but the bubbles of blood that seep to the surface are a familiar yellow.

Peter doesn’t see that, he only registers the betrayal. ‘Scoundrel!’ he cries, taking out his dagger. ‘Have at thee!’

Hook looks at him. You are my past, he thinks, I am your future, and the moment I tell you that, you will know it for truth, and that will be the beginning of the end.

He has never in his life felt so powerful, never so protective.

He draws his cutlass. ‘I’ll run you through, insolent pup!’

They fight back and forth across the stage. We clap and cheer, most for Peter, some for Hook, and I for both.


End file.
